Some students, parents and staff are taking a trip to Costa Rica. Adventures, photos, and stories will be posted here.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Transfer from Monteverde to Central Pacific Coast

I've got some time and finally have some decent wireless service so I'm going to post a bit more detail of yesterday and today.

As I said earlier, yesterday was a transfer day from Monteverde to the Central Pacific Coast. We got up a bit earlier, packed up, had breakfast and loaded the bus. Pablo said that people used to sell T-Shirts that said "I Survived the Road to Monteverde", but have since realized that those T-Shirts, probably weren't good for tourism and the local economy, so they stopped selling them. They still haven't fixed the road! The road is gravel, narrow, winding, and bumpy. Pancho is such an amazing driver. I took some photos from the front passenger seat that give you a pretty good idea what I'm talking about.

Once we were down in the lowlands, we stopped for a crocodile tour with the "Crocodile Man." We got onto a low covered boat and cruised up and down the river looking at birds and crocodiles. When we would find a nice big croc near the shore we would park the boat and the guide would get out and feed raw chicken to the crocs. They are amazing animals. The bird life and scenery was really neat to see.

After the crocodile tour we headed for our hotel. The hotel is really nice, about 100 m from the beach and it also has a swimming pool. We spent the late afternoon on the beach. At this particular beach students are not allowed in the water past their knees because of the potential for rip tides. Students were really good about following instructions and had a great time, finding hermit crabs, digging in the sand, burying Jeremy and turning him into a mermaid...enough said.After the beach we had supper and then some of the students enjoyed an evening dip in the hotel pool. This hotel, Playa Bajuco is a small hotel and we have the entire hotel pretty much to ourselves.